July 21 in History

The Temple of Artemis or Artemision, also known as the Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to a localised form of the goddess Artemis (equated with the Roman goddess Diana). It was located in Ephesus, near modern-day Selçuk in Turkey and is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The temple was destroyed and rebuilt many times in antiquity; the last incarnation of the temple was destroyed in 262 AD, although Artemis continued to be worshipped at the site until around 401 AD. Only foundations and fragments of the last temple remain in the present day. The beginning of the history of the temple is unclear. It is known, however, that the earliest version of the temple was destroyed by a flood in the 7th century BC. A more elaborate reconstruction of the temple began around 550 BC under the leadership of the Greek architect from Crete Chersiphron, funded by Croesus of Lydia. This version of the temple lasted until 356 BC, when it was burned down by an arsonist, popularly identified as Herostratus. The final form of the temple was funded by the people of Ephesus. The temple was central to Ephesian life, as it had great political and social value to its citizens. The Ephesian Artemis, which was considered as separate from the Hellenic version of the god, had unique features and artifacts associated with her and was seen as a protector of the city.

Pope Pontian (Latin: Pontianus; died October 235) was the bishop of Rome from 21 July 230 to 28 September 235. In 235, during the persecution of Christians in the reign of the Emperor Maximinus Thrax, Pontian was arrested and sent to the island of Sardinia. He abdicated to make the election of a new pope possible. Resigning on 28 September 235, he was the first pope to do so. This allowed an orderly transition in the Church of Rome and so ended a schism that had existed in the Church for eighteen years. Some accounts say he was beaten to death only weeks after his arrival on Sardinia. Pontian is venerated as a saint in both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.

Diocletian, nicknamed Jovius, was Roman emperor from 284 until his abdication in 305. He was born Diocles to a family of low status in the Roman province of Dalmatia. As with other Illyrian soldiers of the period, Diocles rose through the ranks of the military early in his career, serving under Aurelian and Probus, and eventually becoming a cavalry commander for the army of Emperor Carus. After the deaths of Carus and his son Numerian on a campaign in Persia, Diocles was proclaimed emperor by the troops, taking the name "Diocletianus". The title was also claimed by Carus's surviving son, Carinus, but Diocletian defeated him in the Battle of the Margus.

Year 365 (CCCLXV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known in the West as the Year of the Consulship of Augustus and Valens. The denomination 365 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.

Berengar I (Latin: Berengarius, Perngarius; Italian: Berengario; c. 845 – 7 April 924) was King of Italy from 887 and Holy Roman Emperor from 915 until his death in 924. He is usually known as Berengar of Friuli, since he ruled the March of Friuli from 874 until at least 890, but he had lost control of the region by 896. Berengar rose to become one of the most influential laymen in the empire of Charles the Fat, and he was elected to replace Charles in Italy after his deposition in November 887. His long reign of 36 years saw him opposed by no fewer than seven other claimants to the Italian throne, and it is usually characterised as troubled because of the many competitors for the crown and the arrival of Magyar raiders in Western Europe. His death was followed by an imperial interregnum that lasted 38 years until the German King, Otto I, was crowned emperor in 962.

The Battle of Taillebourg, a major medieval battle fought in July 1242, was the decisive engagement of the Saintonge War. It pitted a French Capetian army under the command of King Louis IX, also known as Saint Louis, and his younger brother Alphonse of Poitiers, against forces led by King Henry III of England, his brother Richard of Cornwall and their stepfather Hugh X of Lusignan. The battle was fought on the bridge built over the river Charente, a point of strategic importance on the route between northern and southern France. Later it was fought near the city of Saintes. According to Charles Oman; the English and their allies were routed and forced to make peace but the King of France contented himself of leaving things as they had been before the war. The battle put down the Poitevin revolt and marked the end of Henry III's hopes of restoring the Angevin Empire, which had collapsed during his father's reign.

The Battle of Shrewsbury was fought on 21 July 1403, waged between an army led by the Lancastrian King Henry IV and a rebel army led by Henry "Harry Hotspur" Percy from Northumberland. The battle, the first in which English archers fought each other on English soil, reaffirmed the effectiveness of the longbow and ended the Percy challenge to King Henry IV of England. Part of the fighting is believed to have taken place at what is now Battlefield, Shropshire, England, three miles (5 km) north of the centre of Shrewsbury. It is marked today by Battlefield Church and Battlefield Heritage Park.

The Isle of Wight ( WYTE) is an island off the south coast of England. It is a unitary authority and also a ceremonial county. It is separated from the mainland county of Hampshire by the Solent strait, and is otherwise surrounded by the English Channel. Its largest settlement is Ryde, and the administrative centre is Newport. The Isle of Wight has a land area of 380 km2 (150 sq mi), making it the largest island in England, and had an estimated population of 141,660 in 2024. The island is largely rural, with the largest settlements primarily on the coast. These include Ryde in the north-east, Shanklin and Sandown in the south-east, and the large villages of Totland and Freshwater in the west. Newport is located inland at the point at which the River Medina broadens into its estuary, and Cowes and East Cowes flank the estuary on the northern coast. For local government purposes the island is a unitary authority area. It was historically part of Hampshire. The island is known for its mild climate, coastal scenery, and verdant landscape of fields, downland, and chines. It is said to be the sunniest place of Great Britain. It has been designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The distance between the Isle of Wight and mainland Great Britain is between 2 and 5 miles (3 and 8 kilometres). The island also contains dinosaur fossils. The island has played an essential part in the defence of the ports of Southampton and Portsmouth and has been near the front line of conflicts through the ages, having faced the Spanish Armada and weathered the Battle of Britain. From the Victorian era significant urban development took place as the island developed into a tourist destination; it was home to the poets Algernon Charles Swinburne and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Queen Victoria built her summer residence and final home, Osborne House, at East Cowes. It has a maritime and industrial tradition of boat-building, sail-making, the manufacture of flying boats, hovercraft, and Britain's space rockets. The island hosts annual music festivals, including the Isle of Wight Festival, which in 1970 was the largest rock music event ever held.

The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt (c. 1566/1568–1648) was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and the Spanish government. The causes of the war included the Reformation, centralisation, excessive taxation, and the rights and privileges of the Dutch nobility and cities. After the initial stages, Philip II of Spain, the sovereign of the Netherlands, deployed his armies and regained control over most of the rebel-held territories. However, widespread mutinies in the Spanish army caused a general uprising. Under the leadership of the exiled William the Silent, the Catholic and Protestant-dominated provinces sought to establish religious peace while jointly opposing the king's regime with the Pacification of Ghent, but the general rebellion failed to sustain itself. Despite steady military and diplomatic successes by the Governor of Spanish Netherlands and General for Spain, the Duke of Parma, the Union of Utrecht continued their resistance, proclaiming their independence through the 1581 Act of Abjuration and establishing the Calvinist-dominated Dutch Republic in 1588. In the Ten Years thereafter, the Republic (whose heartland was no longer threatened) made conquests in the north and east and received diplomatic recognition from France and England in 1596. The Dutch colonial empire emerged, which began with Dutch attacks on Portugal's overseas territories. Facing a stalemate, the two sides agreed to a Twelve Years' Truce in 1609; when it expired in 1621, fighting resumed as part of the broader Thirty Years' War. An end was reached in 1648 with the Peace of Münster when Spain retained the Southern Netherlands and recognised the Dutch Republic as an independent country.

The Qing dynasty, officially the Great Qing, also known as the Qing Empire or Qing China, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia which existed from 1636/1644 to 1912. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. At the height of its power, the empire stretched from the Sea of Japan in the east to the Pamir Mountains in the west, and from the Mongolian Plateau in the north to the South China Sea in the south. Originally emerging from the Later Jin dynasty founded in 1616 and proclaimed in Shenyang in 1636, the dynasty seized control of the Ming capital Beijing and North China in 1644, traditionally considered the start of the dynasty's rule. The dynasty lasted until the Xinhai Revolution of October 1911 led to the abdication of the last emperor in February 1912. The multi-ethnic Qing dynasty assembled the territorial base for modern China. The Qing controlled the most territory of any dynasty in Chinese history, and in 1790 was the fourth-largest empire in world history to that point. It was also the most populous state at the time, with over 426 million citizens in 1907.

The invasion of Martinique in 1674 was an unsuccessful attempt by the Dutch Republic to conquer the Caribbean island of Martinique from France. In spite of overwhelming Dutch superiority in men and ships, the French won a decisive and unexpected victory.

The Treaty of Passarowitz, or Treaty of Požarevac, was the peace treaty signed in Požarevac (Serbian Cyrillic: Пожаревац, German: Passarowitz, Turkish: Pasarofça), a town that was in the Ottoman Empire but is now in Serbia, on 21 July 1718 between the Ottoman Empire and its adversaries, the Habsburg monarchy and the Republic of Venice. The treaty saw the cession of several Ottoman territories to the Habsburgs, and it was regarded in its time as an extraordinary success and source of pride in Vienna. The treaty marked the end of Ottoman occupation within the Kingdom of Hungary with the cession of Belgrade, Syrmia and the Eyalet of Temesvár.

The French invasion of Egypt and Syria (1798–1801) was a military expedition to Ottoman-held Egypt and Syria led by Napoleon Bonaparte during the French Revolutionary Wars. The campaign aimed to undermine British trade routes, expand French influence, and establish a scientific and administrative presence in Egypt. Napoleon also sought to sever Britain's connection to its colonial holdings in India, with the long-term ambition of challenging British dominance in the region. Departing from Toulon in May 1798, Napoleon’s fleet, comprising around 36,000 troops, landed in Alexandria on 28 June. Advancing rapidly, he defeated the ruling Mamluks at the Battle of the Pyramids, securing control of Cairo and establishing a French administration. The campaign, however, was soon compromised by the destruction of the French fleet at Aboukir Bay by Horatio Nelson, which cut off French reinforcements and supplies. French rule faced resistance, including the Cairo uprising (1798), which was suppressed with significant casualties. Seeking to consolidate French gains, Napoleon advanced into Ottoman Syria, aiming to preempt an Ottoman counteroffensive, but his campaign ended in failure at the Siege of Acre (1799), where Anglo-Ottoman forces, supported by the Royal Navy, repelled French assaults. Recognising the strategic situation and political opportunities in France, Napoleon left Egypt in August 1799, returning to France, where he seized political power. The French army, left under Jean-Baptiste Kléber, continued to resist, but following his assassination, Jacques-François Menou assumed command and struggled to maintain control. The French were ultimately defeated by British-Ottoman forces and surrendered in 1801. The campaign had significant military, political, and intellectual consequences. Napoleon’s presence in Egypt introduced European-style governance, but it also reinforced resistance among local populations. The scientific expedition accompanying the invasion produced the Description de l'Égypte, a seminal work that laid the foundation for modern Egyptology. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone allowed for the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The campaign also contributed to the rise of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, who later established modern Egypt.

Leopold I (Leopold George Christian Frederick; 16 December 1790 – 10 December 1865) was the first king of the Belgians, reigning from 21 July 1831 until his death in 1865. The youngest son of Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Leopold took a commission in the Imperial Russian Army and fought against Napoleon after French troops overran Saxe-Coburg during the Napoleonic Wars. After Napoleon's defeat, Leopold moved to the United Kingdom, where in 1816 he married Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only child of the British Prince Regent (later George IV). Leopold and Charlotte's marriage was happy, but it ended after a year and a half when Charlotte died after delivering a stillborn son. Leopold continued to enjoy considerable status in Britain. As the uncle of Queen Victoria through his sister, he played a major role in the life of Victoria and often acted as her father figure including arranging her marriage with his another nephew, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. After the Greek War of Independence, Leopold was offered the throne of Greece under the 1830 London Protocol that created an independent Greek state, but turned it down, believing it to be too precarious. Instead, he accepted the throne of Belgium in 1831 following the country's independence in 1830. The Belgian government offered the position to Leopold because of his diplomatic connections with royal houses across Europe, and because as the British-backed candidate, he was not affiliated with other powers, such as France, which were believed to have territorial ambitions in Belgium which might threaten the European balance of power created by the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Leopold took his oath as King of the Belgians on 21 July 1831, an event commemorated annually as Belgian National Day. The following year, he married Princess Louise of Orléans, with whom he had four children. He also had two illegitimate sons by his mistress, Arcadie Claret. Leopold's reign was marked by attempts by the Dutch to recapture Belgium and, later, by internal political division between Liberals and Catholics. Leopold was considered a liberal Protestant ruler and encouraged economic modernisation, playing an important role in funding the creation of Belgium's first railway in 1835 and subsequent industrialisation. As a result of the ambiguities in the Belgian Constitution, Leopold was able to slightly expand the monarch's powers during his reign and assumed multiple ministries. He also played an important role in stopping the spread of the Revolutions of 1848 into Belgium. He died in 1865 and was succeeded by his son, Leopold II.

The Treaty of Constantinople signed on 21 July 1832 and was the product of the London Conference of 1832 which opened in February 1832 with the participation of the Great Powers (Britain, France and Russia) on the one hand and the Ottoman Empire on the other. On 21 July 1832 British ambassador Sir Stratford Canning and the other representatives concluded the Treaty of Constantinople, which set the boundaries of the new Kingdom of Greece along the Arta–Volos line. Under the Treaty of London signed on 7 May 1832 between Bavaria and the protecting Powers, and dealing with how the Regency was to be managed until Otto reached his majority (while also concluding the second Greek loan, for a sum of £2,400,000 sterling), Greece was defined as an independent kingdom, with the Arta–Volos line as its northern frontier. The factors that shaped the treaty included the refusal of Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to assume the Greek throne. He was not at all satisfied with the Aspropotamos–Spercheios line, which replaced the more favorable Arta–Volos line considered by the Great Powers earlier. The withdrawal of Leopold I as a candidate for the throne of Greece and the July Revolution in France delayed the final settlement of the frontiers of the new kingdom until a new government was formed in London. Lord Palmerston, who took over as British foreign secretary, agreed to the Arta–Volos line. However, the secret note on Crete, which the Bavarian plenipotentiary communicated to the Courts of Britain, France, and Russia, bore no fruit. The Great Powers ratified the terms of the Constantinople Arrangement in connection with the border between Greece and the Ottoman Empire in the London Protocol of 30 August 1832, which marked the end of the Greek War of Independence and established modern Greece as an independent state free of the Ottoman Empire. The borders of the Kingdom of Greece were reiterated in the Protocol of London signed on 30 August 1832 by the Great Powers, which ratified the terms of the Constantinople Treaty in connection with the border between Greece and the Ottoman Empire and marked the end of the Greek War of Independence creating modern Greece as an independent state free of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was indemnified in the sum of 40,000,000 piastres for the loss of the territory.

The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans. Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven slave states in the South responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy seized US forts and other federal assets in the South. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy comprised eleven states, containing a third of the US population. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. During 1861–1862 in the western theater, the Union made permanent gains, though in the eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. General Ulysses S. Grant's western successes led Lincoln to promote him to command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea, which culminated in his taking Savannah. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of continuing interest is the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian deaths, making it the deadliest in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars.

Springfield is the third most populous city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County. The city's population was 169,176 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Springfield metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 487,061 in 2022 and includes the counties of Christian, Dallas, Greene, Polk, and Webster. Springfield is the largest city in the Ozarks region, and sits on the Springfield Plateau, which ranges from nearly level to rolling hills.

Adair is a city in Adair and Guthrie counties of Iowa in the United States. The population was 791 at the 2020 census.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was one of the oldest railroads in the United States and the first steam-operated common carrier. Maryland chartered the railroad in 1827 and construction began in 1828. It operated as B&O from 1830 until 1987, when it was merged into the Chessie System. Its lines are today controlled by CSX Transportation (CSX).

Louis Rigolly (1876–1958), a Frenchman, was the first man to drive a car at over 100 miles per hour (160 km/h). He set a record of 103.561 mph (166.665 km/h) on a beach at Ostend in Belgium on 21 July 1904, driving a 13.5 litre Gobron-Brillié racing car. He covered a 1 kilometre course in 21.6 seconds, beating Belgian Pierre de Caters mark of 97.25 mph (156.51 km/h), set the previous May over the same 1 kilometre course in Ostend. The record stood for just three months. Rigolly also participated in early Grand Prix motor racing, winning the Light car class of the inaugural Circuit des Ardennes in 1902, driving a Gobron-Brillié.

SS Columbia (1880–1907) was a cargo and passenger steamship that was owned by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company and later the San Francisco and Portland Steamship Company. Columbia was constructed in 1880 by the John Roach & Sons shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania for the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. Columbia was the first ship to carry a dynamo powering electric lights instead of oil lamps and the first commercial use of electric light bulbs outside of Thomas Edison's Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory. Due to this, a detailed article and composite illustration of Columbia was featured in the May 1880 issue of Scientific American magazine. Columbia was lost on 21 July 1907 after a collision with the lumber schooner San Pedro off Shelter Cove, California, with the loss of 88 lives.

An airship, dirigible balloon or dirigible is a type of aerostat (lighter-than-air) aircraft that can navigate through the air flying under its own power. Aerostats use buoyancy from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air to achieve the lift needed to stay airborne.

The Troubles in Ulster of the 1920s was a period of conflict in the Irish province of Ulster, from June 1920 until June 1922, during and after the Irish War of Independence and the partition of Ireland. In Ulster, it was mainly a communal conflict between unionists, who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom, and nationalists, who backed Irish independence: the unionists were mainly Ulster Protestants and the nationalists were mainly Irish Catholics. During this period, more than 500 people were killed in Belfast alone, 500 interned and 23,000 people were made homeless in the city, while approximately 50,000 people fled the province due to intimidation. Most of the victims were Nationalists (73%) with civilians being far more likely to be killed compared to the military, police or paramilitaries. In Belfast where Catholics made up only a third of the population, the disproportionate number of Catholic casualties combined with sustained attacks upon Catholic civilians involving police or special constabulary forces, led to the troubles being known as the 'Belfast Pogrom(s)'.

The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, also known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case from July 10 to July 21, 1925, in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating the Butler Act, a Tennessee state law which outlawed the teaching of human evolution in public schools. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant. Scopes was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had offered to defend anyone accused of violating the Butler Act in an effort to challenge the constitutionality of the law. Scopes was found guilty and was fined $100 (equivalent to $1908 in 2026), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. William Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate and former secretary of state, argued for the prosecution, while famed labor and criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow served as the principal defense attorney for Scopes. The trial publicized the fundamentalist–modernist controversy, which set modernists, who believed evolution could be consistent with religion, against fundamentalists, who believed the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen both as a theological contest and as a trial on whether evolution should be taught in schools. The trial became a symbol of the larger social anxieties associated with the cultural changes and modernization that characterized the 1920s in the United States. It also served its purpose of drawing intense national publicity and highlighted the growing influence of mass media, having been covered by news outlets around the country and being the first trial in American history to be nationally broadcast by radio.

Major Sir Malcolm Campbell (11 March 1885 – 31 December 1948) was a British racing motorist and motoring journalist. He gained the world speed record on land and on water at various times, using vehicles called Blue Bird, including a 1921 Grand Prix Sunbeam. His son, Donald Campbell, carried on the family tradition by holding both land speed and water speed records.

The Spanish Civil War (Spanish: guerra civil española) was fought in Spain from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalist rebels. Republicans loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic included socialists, anarchists, communists, and separatists, supported by the Soviet Union. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists, who established the military-led Spanish State and were directly aided by an intervention from Fascist Italy and participation of Nazi Germany. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war was variously viewed as class struggle, religious struggle, or struggle between republican democracy and dictatorship, revolution and counterrevolution, or communism and fascism. The Nationalists won the war in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975. The war began after the partial failure of the coup d'état of July 1936 against the Popular Front government by a group of generals of the Spanish Republican Armed Forces. They were supported by right-wing groups including the Christian traditionalist party CEDA; monarchists, including both the opposing Alfonsists and the religious conservative Carlists; and the Falange Española de las JONS, a fascist political party. However, rebelling units in almost all important cities did not gain control, leaving Spain militarily and politically divided. The Nationalists were initially led by a military junta, until General Francisco Franco was appointed supreme leader on 1 October 1936 of what he called the Spanish State. The rebellion was countered by the arming of left-wing social movements and parties, and the formation of militias. This led to rapid socioeconomic and political transformation in the Republican zone, referred to as the Spanish Revolution. The Nationalist forces received munitions, soldiers, and air support from Fascist Italy which conducted a large-scale intervention and Nazi Germany which sent its Condor Legion, while the Republican government received support from the Soviet Union and Mexico. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, continued to recognise the Republican government, but followed official policies of non-intervention. Despite this, tens of thousands of citizens from non-interventionist countries directly participated in the conflict, mostly in the pro-Republican International Brigades. Franco gradually emerged as the primary leader of the Nationalists, becoming the dictator of the Spanish State by 1937 and co-opting Falangism, gaining recognition as a fascist leader. The Nationalists advanced from their strongholds in the south and west, capturing most of Spain's northern coastline in 1937 and besieging Madrid. After much of Catalonia was captured in 1938 and 1939 and Madrid was cut off from Barcelona, the Republican military position became hopeless. On 5 March 1939, in response to allegedly increasing communist dominance of the Republican government and the deteriorating military situation, Colonel Segismundo Casado led a military coup against the Republican government, intending to seek peace with the Nationalists. These peace overtures, however, were rejected by Franco. Following internal conflict between Republican factions in Madrid in the same month, Franco entered the capital and declared victory on 1 April 1939. Hundreds of thousands of those associated with the Republicans fled Spain, mostly to refugee camps in southern France; many of those who stayed were persecuted by the victorious Nationalists. The war became notable for the passion and political division it inspired worldwide, and for the many atrocities that occurred. Organised purges occurred in territory captured by Franco's forces to consolidate power. Mass executions took place in areas controlled by the Republicans, with the participation of local authorities varying by location.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (German: [ˈklaʊs fɔn ˈʃtaʊfn̩bɛʁk] ; 15 November 1907 – 21 July 1944) was a German army officer who is best known for his failed attempt on 20 July 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair, part of Operation Valkyrie. Born into the ancient House of Stauffenberg in the Kingdom of Bavaria, Stauffenberg took part in the Invasion of Poland, the 1941–42 invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa and the Tunisian campaign, during which he was severely wounded, losing his left eye, right hand, and two fingers from his left hand. Alongside Major Generals Henning von Tresckow and Hans Oster, he became a key figure in the German resistance to Nazism within the Wehrmacht. Stauffenberg was central to the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler and Operation Valkyrie, a plan to arrest the Nazi leadership following Hitler's death and negotiate an end to the Second World War. On 20 July 1944, Stauffenberg's assassination attempt failed; the explosive he had placed only dealt Hitler minor injuries. The conspirators were arrested, and many of them executed, including Stauffenberg on the day after the attempt. His wife Nina was also arrested, giving birth to their fifth child Konstanze while imprisoned. Their children also included Berthold, who followed in his father's footsteps as a military man, and politician Franz-Ludwig.

The United States Senate is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, and the U.S. House of Representatives is the lower house. Together, the Senate and House have the authority under Article One of the Constitution to make and pass or defeat federal legislation.

Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 3505 was a scheduled flight operated by Canadian Pacific Air Lines for the United Nations from Vancouver, Canada, to Tokyo, Japan. On 21 July 1951, the Douglas C-54 Skymaster, registered CF-CPC, disappeared with 31 passengers and six crew onboard. The incident marked the first aircraft loss during the Korean Airlift.

The 1952 Kern County earthquake occurred on July 21 in the southern San Joaquin Valley and measured 7.3 on the moment magnitude scale. The main shock occurred at 4:52 am Pacific Daylight Time, killed 12 people, injured hundreds more and caused an estimated $60 million in property damage. A small sector of damage near Bealville corresponded to a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), though this intensity rating was not representative of the majority of damage. The earthquake occurred on the White Wolf Fault near the community of Wheeler Ridge and was the strongest to occur in California since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

The First Indochina War, known alternatively as the French Indochina War, was fought in French Indochina between the French Union and the Viet Minh and their respective allies, from 19 December 1946 until 11 August 1954. Most of the engagements of this conflict occurred in Vietnam.

NS Savannah was the first nuclear-powered merchant ship, launched on July 21, 1959, two years after the Soviet ice-breaker Lenin, the first nuclear-powered civilian vessel. A demonstration project for the potential peacetime uses of nuclear energy, she was built in the late 1950s at a cost of $46.9 million. Savannah was given the new designation "NS" for "Nuclear Ship", replacing the traditional commercial vessel prefix "SS" for "Screw Steamer", and was named after SS Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. She was funded by United States government agencies as part of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1955 "Atoms for Peace" program, and was in service between 1962 and 1972 as one of only four nuclear-powered cargo ships ever built.

Elijah Jerry "Pumpsie" Green was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) infielder who played with the Boston Red Sox (1959–62) and New York Mets (1963). A switch-hitter who threw right-handed, he was listed as 6 ft (1.83 m) tall and 175 lb (79 kg).

Sirima Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike, commonly known as Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was a Sri Lankan stateswoman who thrice served as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 1960 to 1965, from 1970 to 1977, and from 1994 to 2000. She was the first woman in the world to be democratically elected prime minister in 1960. A chairperson of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) from 1960 to 1994, she pursued socialist economic policies and promoted Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism. Bandaranaike was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and later served as chairperson of the organisation from 1976 to 1977, becoming the first woman to lead the organisation. Her combined tenure of 17 years and 211 days in office, spanning three non-consecutive terms, makes her the longest-serving prime minister in Sri Lankan history.

Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the US Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it conducted 20 uncrewed developmental flights, and six successful flights by astronauts. The program, which took its name from Roman mythology, cost $2.83 billion. The astronauts were collectively known as the "Mercury Seven", and each spacecraft was given a name ending with a "7" by its pilot.

Alaska Airlines Flight 779 was a contract cargo flight operated on July 21, 1961 by an Alaska Airlines Douglas DC-6A that crashed short of the runway at Shemya Air Force Base with the loss of all six crew members on board.

The 1964 race riots in Singapore were a series of communal disturbances and racial conflicts between the Malay and Chinese communities in Singapore. They occurred just months after Singapore's merger with Malaysia on 16 September 1963 and were regarded as the most serious and prolonged racial violence in the nation's post-war history. Although 1964 was marked by general racial tension, the term specifically refers to two major outbreaks on 21 July and 2 September, particularly the former, which was more severe and resulted in 23 deaths and 454 injuries.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. The Apollo program was conceived in 1960 in the Dwight D. Eisenhower presidency during Project Mercury and executed after Project Gemini. The Apollo program was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in his address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961.

The Aswan High Dam, often called simply Aswan Dam, was built between 1960 and 1970 across the Nile in Aswan, Egypt. One of the world's largest embankment dams, it was developed by the Egyptian government with the help of the Soviet Union to control flooding, increase water storage for irrigation, and generate hydroelectricity. The dam was seen as pivotal to the country's industrialization plans. Like the Aswan Low Dam, which had been completed in 1902, the High Dam has changed the economy and culture of Egypt.

The Troubles were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although centred in Northern Ireland, violence at times spilled into the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe. The conflict arose from political and nationalistic disputes with a strong ethnic and sectarian dimension. Unionists and loyalists, mostly Ulster Protestants, wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom, while Irish nationalists and republicans, mostly Irish Catholics, wanted it to join a united Ireland. Despite the division between Protestants and Catholics, it was not a religious war.

The Lillehammer affair was the murder of Ahmed Bouchikhi, a Moroccan waiter, by Mossad agents in Lillehammer, Norway, on 21 July 1973. The Israeli agents had mistaken him for their target Ali Hassan Salameh, the chief of operations of the group Black September. Six of the fifteen members of the Mossad team were captured and convicted of complicity in the killing by the Norwegian justice system, in a major blow to the intelligence agency's reputation.

Christopher Thomas Ewart Ewart-Biggs was the British ambassador to Ireland, an author, and a senior Foreign Office liaison officer with MI6. He served as ambassador to Ireland from July 9, 1976 until his assassination 12 days later by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Sandyford, Dublin.

The Egyptian–Libyan War, also known as the Four Day War, was a short border war fought between Libya and Egypt that lasted from 21 to 24 July 1977. The conflict stemmed from a deterioration in relations that had occurred between the two states after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had rebuffed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's entreaties to unify their countries and had started to pursue peace negotiations with Israel in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Soon thereafter, Libya began sponsoring dissidents and assassination plots to undermine Sadat, in which Egypt responded in kind to weaken Gaddafi. In early 1976, Gaddafi dispatched troops to the Egyptian frontier where they began clashing with border guards. Sadat responded by moving many troops to the area, while the Egyptian General Staff drew up plans for an invasion to depose Gaddafi.

Jay Silverheels was a First Nations and Mohawk actor and athlete, descended from three Haudenosaunee nations. He was well known for his role as Tonto, the Native American companion of the Lone Ranger in the American Western television series The Lone Ranger.

The lowest natural temperature ever directly recorded at ground level on Earth is −89.2 °C at the then-Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica on 21 July 1983 by ground measurements.

The Republic of China Military Police, referred to informally as the Taiwanese Military Police is a military police force operating under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of National Defense of Republic of China (Taiwan). Unlike military police organisations in many other countries, the ROCMP functions as a distinct branch of the Republic of China Armed Forces.

Akashi is a city in southern Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. As of 1 February 2024, the city had an estimated population of 305,925 in 137,288 households and a population density of 6,200 people per km2. The total area of the city is 49.42 square kilometres (19.08 sq mi).

Dr. Ram Baran Yadav is a Nepalese politician and physician who served as the first president of Nepal from 23 July 2008 to 29 October 2015, following the declaration of republic in 2008. Previously, he served as Minister of Health from 1999 to 2001 and general secretary of the Nepali Congress.

Barack Hussein Obama II is an American retired politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American to serve as president. Obama represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 2005 to 2008 and served as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program, as well as research in aeronautics and space. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., NASA operates ten field centers across the US and is organized into three mission directorates: Human Spaceflight, Research and Technology, and Science. Established in 1958 amid the Space Race, NASA succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to give the US space program a distinct civilian orientation focused on peaceful applications. Since then, it has led most American spaceflight programs, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the Apollo program, Skylab, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station (ISS), and the ongoing multinational Artemis program.

A mob attack occurred in Yuen Long, a town in the New Territories of Hong Kong, on the evening of 21 July 2019. It took place in the context of the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. A mob dressed in white stormed the MTR's Yuen Long station and attacked protesters returning from a demonstration in Sheung Wan on Hong Kong Island as well as bystanders.

Barbenheimer was a cultural phenomenon that preceded and surrounded the simultaneous theatrical release of two major studio films—Barbie by Warner Bros. Pictures and Oppenheimer by Universal Pictures—on July 21, 2023. The dichotomy between Barbie, a fantasy comedy directed by Greta Gerwig based on the fashion doll Barbie, and Oppenheimer, a biographical thriller directed by Christopher Nolan based on the life of theoretical physicist and creator of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, sparked widespread online engagement. This included the creation of memes, merchandise, and themed content across social media.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is an American retired politician who was the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented Delaware in the United States Senate from 1973 to 2009 and also served as the 47th vice president under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.

The Bangladesh Air Force is the aerial warfare branch of the Bangladesh Armed Forces, responsible for defending the airspace of Bangladesh and supporting national security operations. Operating under the Ministry of Defence, the BAF conducts air defence, reconnaissance, transport, and disaster relief missions. Established during the 1971 Liberation War, the Bangladesh Air Force has actively participated in United Nations peacekeeping operations and regional security initiatives.